Op-ed by Mia Barnes, Body+Mind Magazine.
Drug/medication waste ranks among healthcare’s most overlooked sustainability challenges. While clinical errors receive significant attention, a vast share of medication loss stems from operational inefficiencies such as expired inventory, overstocking, and dispensing processes that destroy recoverable doses.
For organisations pursuing environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, pharmacy automation offers a measurable path to reducing both waste and costs. The technology addresses logistical gaps that account for a substantial portion of preventable drug loss.
Understanding where pharmacy drug waste originates
Understanding the root causes of medication waste requires examining how pharmacies manage inventory and fulfil prescriptions. A comprehensive systematic review comparing pharmacy automation systems with typical manual processes found that traditional systems are associated with medication error rates of 2%–5%, contributing to up to $5 billion in annual costs globally.
The analysis, which examined 32 studies across hospital settings, identified workflow inefficiencies as a primary contributor to preventable medication loss.
As a pharmacy automation solution provider, Capsa Healthcare notes that as much as 30% of pharmaceutical wastage “stems from logistics rather than clinical factors.” This distinction matters because systematic process improvements can address logistical waste, which is harder to reach through clinical fixes alone.
The leading pharmacy automation vendors focus on these operational bottlenecks, where better inventory tracking and dispensing workflows can yield measurable reductions.
Cutting waste through automated inventory tracking
Inventory management represents one of the most significant opportunities to reduce medication loss. Omnicell founder and CEO Randall Lipps has described his long-term vision for pharmacy operations as “one with no waste, no errors and no time lost to low-value tasks,” framing waste reduction as a core measure of whether automation is working as intended.
Scott Person, PharmD, product owner at Bluesight, which provides medication intelligence software, noted that the best way to manage inventory is to know how much you need, how much you have on hand, and how much is on the way. Pairing that visibility with expiration tracking helps pharmacies avoid the overstocking and expired inventory that drive a large share of preventable waste.
Reducing waste at the point of dispensing
Waste occurs not only at the inventory level but also during the dispensing process itself. Several top pharmacy automation systems companies have introduced technologies aimed at this stage, including BD, whose Pyxis platform was the subject of a peer-reviewed study published in Cureus.
The research found that relocating a BD Pyxis dispensing system closer to the point of care significantly reduced the time anesthesia providers spent carrying used narcotics after a case, cutting the friction that often led providers to delay wasting until the end of their shift.
A McKesson-sponsored roundtable of health system leaders covered by Becker’s Hospital Review reached a similar conclusion about centralized dispensing. One pharmacy director described splitting costly, low-volume drug bottles across a health system’s smaller campuses rather than stocking each site separately, a practice she said delivered significant financial benefit by reducing waste.
Connecting automation to sustainability goals
Michelle Chui, PharmD, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, pointed to reducing drug wastage and improving expiration-date tracking as areas where pharmacy automation and inventory-management tools can support pharmacists’ work, during a discussion at the 2025 APhA Annual Meeting.
Facilities that implement automated medication management systems gain several sustainability advantages:
- Support for sustainability reporting requirements through measurable, trackable waste-reduction data
- Lower operational costs alongside reduced environmental impact
- A smaller volume of pharmaceutical compounds entering waste streams
- Verifiable data for ESG disclosures and corporate responsibility reports
Turning drug waste into a sustainability win
The evidence points to a clear opportunity. Most pharmacy drug waste stems from logistical inefficiencies rather than unavoidable clinical factors. Automation addresses these inefficiencies at two critical levels, inventory management and point-of-dispensing workflows.
Providers like Capsa Healthcare and others in the space have built systems that optimise stock rotation, forecast demand accurately and recover unused medications to prevent substantial waste. For businesses evaluating sustainability investments, pharmacy automation offers a proven way to reduce environmental impact while improving operational performance.
